I'm not gonna lie, I had some serious hopes for my Reds this season. We finally looked like we had a few things worked out. Last year the story was that we had decent offense but had awful starting and closing pitching. In the off-season we acquired Francisco Cordero and Edison Volquez for Josh Hamilton. Hamilton was going to be missed but he wasn't nearly as good last year as he is now so I thought it was a great idea. Plus, we had some young guns like Cueto coming up to round things out. Good news on the pitching front, and since I thought we had offense covered I was pumped. A team that could contend? NICE! Plus, the word was that the Cards, Astros, Cubs and Pirates weren't going to be that great so we had an even better chance of running away with it and finally making the play offs...

Now we are nearing the all-star break and the Reds are 13 games behind the Cubs for the division title and well under .500. It's not looking good for any form of a play off berth. Plus, to make things worse, the Reds teased us with getting 2 games under .500. We thought that with Bruce back we might have a chance at turning things around. It was just a tease, like I said. After that the team went on the road and we started going downhill. Nothing seemed to work out. We couldn't field, hit, pitch or run. In fact, fundamental baseball was just not happening. The question becomes, is it too late to make something out of this year or will the management finally start to make some moves towards next year. Who will be traded and brought in before the all-star break, if anyone? Personally, I'm holding out hope for a late season burst but I'll still be looking to next year for the real fireworks.